Pachelbel's Canon
I'd call it the oldest and most spread music fad of mankind. Pachelbel's Canon (aka: Canon in D major; fill german title: Kanon und Gigue in D-Dur für drei Violinen und Basso Continuo) is the most famous piece of music by Johann Pachelbel. It influenced pop-music all over the world but mostly in Netherland and around previous netherland colonies. It is used as a Wedding song and generally included in romantic lullabys and techno music. It was played in countless versions for ALL instruments and ALL musical genres. The process shows no sign of abating. It was written around 1680 , during the Baroque period as a piece of chamber music for three violins and basso continuo. Since then it has ben arranged for a ANY music instrument and ANY music style. The Canon was originally paired with a gigue in the same music key, however this composition is rarely performed or recorded today. The canon is the most extraordinary instance of the "Crossover music" phenomenon in all of music. During a short period in the early 1970s it went from being a quite obscure work of early music to a universally familiar cultural item. The canon was first adapted musically in a pop song by the Spanish vocal group Los Pop Tops on their 1968 hit "O Lord, Why Lord?", which made modest chart showings in both the USA (peaking at #79 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Netherlands. Pachelbel's Canon in Film Pachelbel's Canon, in a classic or orchestral version, has been featured repeatedly in films: 19th century Musical adaptations The chord progression ("I V vi iii IV I IV V") of Pachelbel's canon has been incorporated into or otherwise influenced many pieces of contemporary music: Michael Jackson's Sonic 3 Other uses * Soccer fans in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, are known to use the basic melody to chant in stadiums. One popular Dutch text is "'t is stil aan de overkant" ("it's quiet on the other side"), which they repeat over and over again and which can also sometimes be heard at other sporting events that take place in stadiums, such as ice skating. * At least one big-city National Public Radio station, during the time of the Taco Bell TV ads involving a "talking" Chihuahua dog, posted a billboard reading, "Yo quiero Pachelbel!". My Canon is Too Big! Anyone cades for this paragraph? It's commonly played at weddings and is on many classical music compilations, along with other famous Baroque pieces such as , a 19th century arrangement of the second movement from Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, and Albinoni's Adagio in G minor, which is a reconstruction of a lost piece by Tomaso Albinoni. A non-original viola pizzicato part is also commonly added (in a string orchestra or String quartet setting) when a harpsichord player is not used to improvise harmonies over the bass line. Structure The violins play a three-voice canon over the ground bass which provides the main theme. Colors are used to indicate individual variations, 3 out of 28 can be seen here in full. The name Canon in D is slightly misleading because the piece is not a strict music canon but rather a chaconne or a passacaglia. It is based, both harmonically and structurally, on a two-measure ground bass: The same two-bar bass line and harmonic sequence repeated over and over, about 30 times in total. "Boooooooooooring"! The Chords of this sequence are: D major (tonic), A major (dominant dominant), B minor (tonic parallel), F# minor (dominant parallel), G major (subdominant), D major (tonic), G major (subdominant), A major (dominant). And of course G major (gin tonic)! The sequence (or rather, close imitations of it) appears elsewhere in the classical canon. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed it for a passage in Die Zauberflöte (1791), at the moment where the Three Youths first appear. He may have learned the sequence from Joseph Haydn, who had used it in the minuet of his string quartet Opus 50 No. 2, composed in 1785. Neither Haydn's nor Mozart's passage is an exact harmonic match to Pachelbel's, both deviating in the last two bars. For parallels in popular music, see below. canon for dummies The actual canon is played over the bass by the violins. In the beginning, the first violin plays the first Variation. After this is over, it starts playing the second variation, and the second violin starts playing the first variation. Then the first violin starts playing the third variation, the second violin starts playing the second variation, the third violin enters with the first variation, and so on. The structure of the canon becomes increasingly dense towards the middle of the piece as the variations grow in complexity. Afterwards, the piece gradually returns to a less complex structure. There are 28 variations in total. The canon is relatively simple and doesn't make use of any advanced counterpoint devices such as Inversion in counterpoint, Augmentation, diminution, etc. achelbel's Canon.ogg - Pachelbel's Canon - An arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon for solo piano, performed by Lee Galloway (www.leegalloway.com) Pachelbels_canon_canonical.ogg A version in canon - The canon played in canon throughout, A medly recording of many Pachelbel Cannon pop songs: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~charles/chords-reuntied/02-packbell.ogg *PDF of the score to Canon & Gigue. *Information on the Paillard recording *A list of over 460 recordings *Website about Canon In D *Free easy piano arrangement of Canon in D at Easybyte *The musical roots of the songs "Seek ye First" and "Streets of London" in Johann *The Canon In D (Rock arrangement by [[JerryC])] and cover versions by various artists Air on G string ko:파헬벨의 카논 ja:カノン (パッヘルベル) pl:Kanon D-dur (Pachelbel) zh:巴貝海爾卡農D大調